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08/04/2003 Archived Entry: "Granitas"

Say something in a foreign language, notably French or Italian (somehow this doesn’t work for Swahili), and it becomes romantic and wonderful, no matter how prosaic in English.

Gelato is nothing more than the Italian word for ice cream, albeit a high fat and very dense style of ice cream. It’s the way Italians have made ice cream way before Haagen-Dazs, to which it is akin. Italians know full well that no matter what it is called, there is great gelato, good gelato, and junk gelato. Never mind. In New York – in America – the word gelato has come to mean something more special than ice cream, and it has become obnoxiously trendy and wrong-headed – misguided -- to prefer gelato over ice cream just because it has an Italian name.

Now: The word granita is making inroads. It means ices, but it would be hard for a fashionable restaurateur to sell ices for $8. Call it granita (granite is the plural) and you get your price. (The word for ice, as in ice cube, is ghiaccio.) I just had delicious blueberry granita at Kitchen 82, on Columbus Ave. and 82nd St. It came on the restaurants one and only $25 fixed price menu.

Ironically, it is hard even in Italy to get good and true granita. What passes for granita everywhere I go in Italy (which is Rome and south), is what we in the States would call “slush.” It is made in a circulating freezing machine, just like the ones we have with tropical punch slush in movie theaters. The Italian version is often no better; the flavors are fake and the colors are just as artificial. If you want a real granita di café, which is sweetened coffee frozen into thin flakes of ice, as all flavors of granita should be and used to be, you have to ask for caffe freddo. Granita di limone (lemon ice) is the other old-fashioned, standard flavor. I can’t find that anymore at all, except as the slush version.

What we call Italian ices in the States is a variation on granita, in that both are generally made with only sugar and fruit juices or purees. But then the same definition can be applied to sorbetto or sorbet. My guess is that Italians in the U.S. found it possible, because we have had good, relatively inexpensive electric freezing equipment long before Italy, to make the ice and keep it cold. It’s just that mechanical ices machines make the crystals very small, not flakes of ice as in homemade granita.

Classic Italian granita is something that needs to be made by hand, which is why you won’t find it at your local ice cream shop. It is so simple to do you will be amazed at how delicious those flakes of ice can be.

I recently made a watermelon granita using a recipe in Nadia Roden’s book Granita Magic. The result was delicious and refreshing. She has many good flavor combinations in the book.

Arthur’s two cents: Most of the recipes in the book begin by making a simple syrup of varying ratios. If you’re planning on making more than one type of granita it will make your life easier if you just make up one large batch of simple syrup with a 3 parts sugar to 4 parts water ratio. You can store it in a bottle in your fridge and adjust the amount of syrup in each recipe according to the type of fruit used and your own taste (actually it will taste less sweet after freezing). It’s also great for sweetening ice tea as it dissolves thoroughly in liquid without the graininess of granulated sugar.

Many recipes also call for a small amount of lemon or lime for additional flavor. I didn’t have limes on hand when I made the watermelon granita so I substituted a lemon with equal success.

Watermelon Granita
makes enough for 4 to 6 granitas

1/2 cup water
5 to 7 tablespoons sugar
1/2 large watermelon (about 5 pounds of flesh)
Juice and zest of 2 limes

Put the water and sugar in a saucepan and bring it to a low boil. When the sugar has dissolved, remove the pan from the heat.

Cut the rind off the watermelon, then cut the flesh into 2-inch chunks.

Puree the chunks in a food processor. Press the puree through a sieve; discard the seeds and fibers. Stir the syrup, lime juice, and zest into the melon liquid.

Here’s some granita-making tips:

• Use a small, flat pan with a large surface area. The more shallow the pan is filled, the quicker it will freeze (less than 3/4” deep works best).

• Cover the pan with foil or plastic wrap.

• Freeze the pan and refrigerate the liquid beforehand to accelerate the crystallization process.

• After an hour or so, the liquid will start to freeze along the sides of the pan. Using a fork, scrape the ice away from the edges towards the center of the pan. Repeat this process every half hour for a couple of hours and eventually the pan will be filled with fluffy-ice flakes.

• If you’re not going to eat it immediately, leave it in the freezer overnight and when you’re ready to eat it leave it out of the freezer for about 10 minutes or so.